If there were any doubts about the viability of Cathy Glasson’s upstart candidacy for Iowa governor, they’ve probably been dispelled by recent developments.

The little-known union leader from Coralville raised $1.3 million in 2017, the second-highest haul in the seven-way Democratic race. On Jan. 18, she launched her first TV ad, putting her face and message in front of thousands of voters, and on Feb. 5 she executed a statewide organizing effort at the Democratic precinct caucuses.

However, union leaders and members who have worked alongside her for the last two decades are raising doubts about the motives driving her candidacy.

Glasson faces criticism that her campaign is less about electing a progressive governor and more about positioning the Service Employees International Union as a player in the 2020 presidential contest — and frustration that SEIU has funneled money into her candidacy even as her local is fighting for survival.

“This isn’t working,” University of Iowa Hospital emergency room nurse Lynnette Halstead said of Glasson’s dual role as candidate and union leader. “She’s not in office, she’s not keeping us informed, she’s not doing the day-to-day stuff that we need done to keep this union.”

Glasson, 59, is the president of SEIU Local 199, the North Liberty-based union that represents health care workers and school support staff in about 20 bargaining units from Creston to Dubuque. She’s been involved in union politics for two decades and was a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Now, in her first run for office, she’s positioned herself as the most liberal candidate in the Democratic field. At the top of Glasson’s agenda is support for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and universal health care coverage — national political issues tailor-made for the political base organized by 2016 president candidate Bernie Sanders.

In an interview with the Register, Glasson described her candidacy as focused on both 2018 and 2020 — and even 2022.

"We’re building a grassroots movement of working Iowans and people in this state that will not only get out and stand in line at the polls in June and November in ’18 but build this progressive base of voters that lead into the 2020 presidential and then 2022," Glasson said in an interview. "I’m going to be on the ballot, but this is about everyday Iowans building this bold progressive movement starting in 2018 and going beyond.”

The 2018 vs. 2020 argument

Current and former SEIU employees and representatives contend that the goal is more about identifying and activating Iowans tuned into the Fight for 15 and Medicare for All movements — and building a list that could be valuable when Democratic presidential candidates begin canvassing Iowa ahead of its first-in-the-nation caucuses.

“It’s part of a Midwest strategy to build political connections, particularly in Iowa, where SEIU got out of politics a few years ago,” former SEIU 199 organizer Zach Peterson said in an interview. “It’s about developing an infrastructure politically that SEIU can use through the 2019 caucus campaign.”

Peterson recalled helping Glasson brainstorm about nurses from the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics who could be recruited to run for governor before Glasson herself decided to run. He was laid off by SEIU last year and now works in a similar role for the Teamsters Local 238 union, which has endorsed candidate Nate Boulton in the Democratic primary race.

The campaign's goal at the outset was to increase SEIU’s political power — not elect a governor, he said.

“That could’ve changed as her campaign progressed,” he said, “but that was absolutely the rationale at the birth of the campaign.”

Glasson dismisses that assertion, casting her run for governor as an earnest effort rooted in a new approach to exerting political power for working people.

“It’s not about SEIU’s influence in a presidential cycle,” Glasson said of her candidacy. “It’s about everyday Iowans building a base of support on issues like health care and then calling out candidates when they come into the state on those core issues that we care about.”

While Glasson and her campaign manager insist winning in 2018 is their primary goal, they do not hesitate to put the campaign in a broader context — one that includes influencing the 2020 presidential race.

“To us, it’s about doing politics differently and building a movement that’s going to last no matter who the (gubernatorial) nominee is,” said Brian Shepherd, a longtime SEIU organizer now running Glasson’s campaign. “We’ve been pretty clear about this: the governor’s race will set the tone for every presidential candidate coming here in 2020.”

The secondary objective is to build a labor movement with specific goals and real political leverage that isn’t tied to a specific employer or bargaining unit, he said. That’s critical in an era in which Republican legislatures in Iowa and across the country have diluted workers’ collective bargaining power.

“I think Cathy’s been pretty clear, and I agree with this assessment: The labor movement is essentially gone in Iowa. It’s only a matter of time,” Shepherd said. “Cathy Glasson as governor — as the de facto head of the Democratic Party going into the 2020 presidential election with this bold agenda — changes everything.”

SEIU’s outsized campaign clout

Campaign finance data shows the extent to which SEIU is bankrolling Glasson’s candidacy and the relative dearth of financial support beyond the international union and its affiliates from across the country.

Even Shepherd, Glasson’s campaign manager, remains on the SEIU payroll. Finance records show the international union paid his salary and those of several other staffers as in-kind contributions to Glasson’s campaign.

Individual donors, by contrast, represent $177,000 of the $1.58 million Glasson raised in 2017, and the vast majority of those individuals are not Iowans. People with an Iowa address donated $31,406 to Glasson’s candidacy, less than 2 percent of her total.

Her leading Democratic rivals, by contrast, raised far more in individual donations from Iowans: Nate Boulton received $418,000, representing 38 percent of his total raised, while Fred Hubbell raised $2.3 million, 75 percent of his total.

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, the local progressive group that endorsed Glasson early on and has supported her organizationally throughout the campaign, also has received a cash infusion from SEIU. The union’s main campaign arm donated $30,000 to CCI’s state-level PAC in 2017, representing 66 percent of the PAC’s total contributions for the year.

The group has announced it will spend $40,000 to back Glasson’s candidacy with independent campaign spending. That money comes from an allied nonprofit whose donors are not public.

The Glasson campaign's commitment to building a durable grassroots movement alongside a 2018-focused political campaign is one of the things that made her candidacy so appealing to CCI, said Evan Burger, a senior organizer for CCI Action.

“Cathy’s running to win, she’s mounting a serious campaign and she’s clearly a top-tier candidate," Burger said. "But they're trying to build a grassroots movement at the same time they’re trying to win. That's one way her campaign is maybe a little different than other campaigns."

Union's priorities questioned

For some rank-and-file employees represented by SEIU 199 in Des Moines, Iowa City and elsewhere, meanwhile, SEIU’s big investment in Glasson is an ongoing source of frustration.

Several employees represented by SEIU 199 expressed anger that Glasson has embarked on a political campaign at such a fraught time for public-sector unions, and that SEIU has contributed so generously to her campaign rather than recertification and membership efforts at Broadlawns Hospital and the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

“I don’t think very highly of them as an organization in Iowa,” Broadlawns nurse Christie Sherrard said of SEIU 199 in an interview with the Register. “They’re just not doing the basics.”

Sherrard said she took a job at the public hospital early last year in large part because of its union representation. But she quickly soured on SEIU — particularly after what she described as a late and lackluster organizing effort ahead of the recertification vote.

Public sector unions in Iowa must hold recertification votes at the conclusion of each contract under the collective bargaining overhaul passed by lawmakers last year. SEIU needed 99 votes to retain its representation of the nurses at Broadlawns; it won 74.

“I feel that the lack of continued organization and failure to engage members is the reason SEIU was not certified at Broadlawns,” Sherrard wrote in an email to the Register. “It bothers me personally that Cathy Glasson is running for governor based on her experience as a union leader and organizer.”

Glasson contends that the deck was stacked against the Broadlawns nurses from the start, since the recertification law requires a majority of all employees represented by the union — not just a majority of those who cast votes.

“Broadlawns nurses actually voted and, in any traditional or democratic election, won their union,” she said. “It’s the Republican Legislature that stole it by passing the legislation that rigged the system against working people when they wanted to have a union.”

Some employees represented by SEIU 199 at UI Hospital, where Glasson worked as an intensive care nurse, have also expressed exasperation with the union’s representation and Glasson’s leadership.

Halstead, the ER nurse and a 10-year veteran of the hospital who served as union chapter president and sat on two bargaining committees, said she thought Glasson was hard to reach and provided little information as the nurses attempted to negotiate a new contract with the hospital in early 2017.

Those contract negotiations played out at the same time lawmakers in Des Moines took up the labor reform package that sharply curtailed unions’ bargaining rights. As the bill surged toward passage, UI nurses scrambled to accept the hospital’s offer and get a contract in place before the bill became law.

Even now, a year later, Halstead said, there’s widespread uncertainty among nurses over whether they have a contract or even if they’re represented by a union at all. That confusion and lack of representation, she said, is on Glasson.

“We have a leader who’s worried about her run for governor, not a leader who’s worried about what’s going on with our union in the hospital,” she said. “That’s not what we need. We need somebody that’s present right now.”

Glasson defended her ongoing work for the union, describing how she carries an SEIU-issued cell phone and computer on the campaign trail to stay in touch with staff and file paperwork on behalf of members.

"I do work in the car and return calls from the car," Glasson said. "I filed a grievance this morning before I left for Des Moines."

The issue at UI, she said, is the ambiguity over whether the union is still in place following the failure to ratify the contract last year. SEIU is continuing its representation and organizing work even as the hospital has refused to acknowledge it, she said.

Still, Halstead worries what will happen when UI faces its own recertification, and predicts the nurses there are likely to fail just like their counterparts at Broadlawns.

“If we had to vote to keep our union, we wouldn’t get the votes we need,” she said. “And that’s all because of leadership. That falls right back on the SEIU leadership.”

Glasson, in turn, said SEIU has assigned three full-time staffers to organizing the hospital ahead of a fall recertification vote.

"We’re going to build membership, sign up people and get them ready to vote to keep their union this fall," she said. "That’s the super priority for me."